As a college student in the late 90's, I remember getting the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract--a treasure trove of anecdotes, thoughts, and the first work that introduced me to something other than conventional baseball thinking. I may be remembering wrong, but I think at one point he was discussing secondary average, a measure of walks and extra base hits, and how, although George Sisler was very good at doing one thing (hitting singles), he wasn't good at doing anything else. So to those that still use Batting Average as the primary measurement (and there are far too many still out there today), he is a god. But that's all he brought to the table.

I don't think some of the predictable anwers like Blylevin, Moris, and Rice are that overrated, because they are predictable. I think the overall perception of those players is about right. Very few people argue that Nolan Ryan and Cal Ripken Jr are overrated, which is a good indicator that they might be.

I suppose my thinking was that there is such a great divide in the perceptions people have of guys like Morris and Rice, old school thinking versus new school (sabermetric) thinking. So, I guess your point is valid, then, that, on average, they are viewed about right.

But they are not viewed correctly by the people doing the HOF voting...When Morris gets 6% of the vote (in 2013), and an arguably better pitcher in Kevin Brown only gets 2% of the vote in his only year on the ballot, either Morris is glaringly overrated by many, Brown glaringly underrated by many, or both.